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Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Social Media Game Elementary School Students Should Be Playing

I'm a student
voice advocate. Fortunately, my employer supports this and as such, we have
been incorporating the voice of students in the guidelines around social media
(You can see the teen guidelines atschools.nyc.gov/socialmedia).
Most recently I had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of elementary
students about social media and which platforms they are using. Admittedly, I'm
not much of a user of social media platforms for the under 13 set, so I knew I
had a lot to learn. Interestingly, across the board, one platform rose to the
top and I had never heard of it before.

The platform is
called MovieStar Planet and it promises players "Fame, Fortune, and
Friends." Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the first reaction from
many of the adults about this game was negative. Online gaming? Social media?
Fame, fortune, friends = narcissism. Blech.

When I suggested
this would be a great game to be reviewed on an education site, I was told, the
site only reviews games that were educational. For some it seems if kids like
it and it plays to their need for attention, it has to be bad.

Not so.

Here is how
MovieStar Planet describes their site:

"MovieStarPlanet
is a social website where children and teenagers work together with their
friends to create cartoons. MovieStarPlanet is a blend of Facebook and YouTube
with a learning dimension added."

Here's how it works:

In
MovieStarPlanet you get a personal virtual MovieStar which is used in movies,
chat rooms and games.

In
the Movies and chat rooms a microphone can be used to record speechlines and
voice chat - please see the "How to record sound" instruction movie
for details about how to record sound.

Your
MovieStar earns fame points and StarCoins (the virtual money in
MovieStarPlanet) when you participate in the MovieStarPlanet virtual world.

StarCoins
are earned when other users watch your published movies, when you watch and
rate other movies, and when you play games in the chat rooms.

Fame
points are earned when other users watch your published movies.

Your
MovieStar starts at level 0, and when you earn fame points you rise in levels.
New levels give access to new animations and access to chat rooms reserved for
MovieStars at higher levels.

So
you might be reading this and be a bit freaked out that young people are being
social online. What if someone says something mean? What if someone is not who
they say they are?

Real
concerns indeed which is why it is important for adults to be in the online
worlds of young people. That said, when I talked to the students, they
could have given a class on the topic. They definitely knew how to handle it.

-Tell
the person nicely that you don't like what they are saying.

-If
they continue block and report them.

That
usually did the trick. If not, they say they'd get a parent or teacher that
wouldn't "freak out and ban it" involved. And, that's a real concern
for kids. Too often one negative thing happens and the response from adults is
to ban and block (like
this school did) rather than empower and prepare our youth who are growing
up in a world where being savvy on social media in crucial.

Think
about it this way. What better way for children to develop literacy
skills then to chat with each and create movies for a real audience. And,
bonus. The children have the opportunity to connect with others from around the
world.

Now check out who is behind the creation of MovieStar Planet:

The
Danish Ministry of Science Technology and Innovation in cooperation with The
Danish University of Education, and a number of elementary school teachers.In
2009-11 the development of MovieStarPlanet is part of the research and
development project about the use of games in education called Serious Games on a Global Market
Place

Here are the
education objectives:

The
cartoons in MovieStarPlanet are small and very simple, focusing on using
English in new and motivating ways. The cartoon medium is used to practice the
written English skills of the children allowing them to:

·read and write screenplays

·watch their own and other children’s Movies so
that they practice listening to and understanding/interpreting the English
language